Last evening I took my first local road trip since I decided to plan and execute more such outings. This trip was unique however in that the destination was basically unplanned. Unfortunately, it did not quite go as I had hoped.

If you did not know, a total lunar eclipse—the first of this type since 28 October 2004—was visible for Africa and Europe and partly visible for most of the rest of the world. The refraction of sunlight through the Earth's atmosphere during a total eclipse paints the moon in a reddish hue, particularly hypnotic during the moment of "greatest eclipse" when the moon is in the center of Earth's umbra.

As the sun set and the start of the visibility period for eastern North America neared, I headed outdoors to try to catch the moon rise. I descended the stairs of my apartment and turned right only to see an enormous mass of dense clouds filling the entire eastern sky. Since the moon was due to rise shortly, already in the middle of the visually best parts of the eclipse, I was obviously disappointed.

I thought perhaps getting into an area where I had more visibility of the lower sky and horizon might help, but only if the clouds dissipated some. Not willing to take the chance of missing a great show, I got into my car and headed towards Interstate 10. The plan was to drive west to Exit 181 (SR 267) and find such a spot.

Driving the fifteen mile stretch of highway, I anxiously awaited a sign that the clouds might disperse and offer a glimpse of the moon. That moment never did come but I decided to continue on the mission to find the right vista anyway. I exited and turned north on SR 267 as I did not recall seeing any particularly good spots to the south the last time I drove there.

Immediately to my left was what appeared to be a perfect location—an abandoned gas station with a long curvy entrance road. I drove up to the next intersection and made a U-turn during which I noticed a few cars parked on the grass and a small group of people standing around. Near them was a sign for some University of Florida facility, so I assumed they were an astronomy club or something.

The curvy drive to the former Exprezit! gas station was a nice spot, although the openness of the terrain and my proximity to the I-10 interchange made me feel as though every driver that passed on SR 267 was looking right at me. The view of the horizon was partially blocked by trees across the street but it was no matter; the clouds were still fully occupying the eastern sky.

There was a nice cool breeze gently wrapping around me as The Sounds of Swing quietly emanated from my windows and sunroof. With no change in the cloudiness in sight, I decided to head back to that group of people I saw and maybe learn a bit more. It was 1845 EST.

In this image assembled from three satellite photographs you can see SR 267 just north of I-10. In the upper left corner is the abandoned gas station and curvy drive. The upper right corner depicts some of the UF facility. You can see the intersection with SR 267 just below it. The tree closest to the intersection is where I joined the crowd facing east, which appears to be due south in this composite. [ interactive ]

You may notice the picture comes from Yahoo! Maps but I link to Google Maps. This is because while Google offers a higher resolution image with more zoom and clarity, a photo separation line bisects the region. It changed the focus of the composite so I went with the uniform version instead.

When I parked in the grass and started to get out of my car, the entire group stopped to look in my direction. If there had been a jukebox playing, it would have most certainly scratched to a halt.

"I assume you're all here for the lunar eclipse," I postulated, breaking the silence.

Astronomy students they were not. The crowd actually consisted of multi-generational members of the same family. They had come from various parts of Florida for a "reunion of sorts," as the man who responded to my query stated. A few of them had obviously convinced the others, ranging in age from high school or college age to late adulthood, to come out and witness the eclipse.

Ironically, I was the most knowledgeable person present and ended up fielding lunar eclipse and other space-related questions. There was some additional brief chit-chat but their conversation soon returned to family topics foreign to me. Staring over the group in silence, I watched the ever-darkening sky for a sign of anything.

At 1905 EST, I pointed and commanded to the group, "Look!" A faint glow of white light had managed to penetrate the clouds and was slowly getting brighter. This renewed hope invoked an energy in the crowd, now moving away from the cars to get a slightly better view without the interference of a telephone pole.

Over the course of the next twenty minutes, we watched with fading enthusiasm as the clouds continued to mask and slightly uncover portions of the moon, now in its final stages of eclipse. There were a few moments when it appeared the clouds would part just enough to completely allow a full viewing of the moon, but it would not occur.

The group eventually left and I soon followed suit at 1945 EST, watching what I could see of the moon during the twenty mile drive back. Again, for a few moments here and there unobstructed views seemed eminent but never actually materialized.

In all, despite the failure to watch the lunar eclipse, the evening was a lot of fun. And if nothing else, I have a new destination to choose from when I seek a place to view the sky.

Oh, and for the record, that UF sign that contributed to my false impression students and/or professors were gathered was not for any space-related facility. It is actually the Gadsden County Extension Office for the University of Florida Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences.

I have been collecting the following linkage for the past few weeks, so some of the items are more current than others.

The Beginning
This is an example of what we should have seen last night…

Big Bullies
…but this is more like what we saw.

Lunar Eclipse Gallery
Featuring images from CNN, The Associated Press, NASA and Space.com.

Another Eclipse Gallery
Featuring amateur photographs from around the world.

Flickr: Lunar Eclipse
The most recently uploaded photos tagged with lunar and eclipse.

Totenkopf Toaster SKULL-Toast
This German toaster brands a skull and crossbones graphic on the toasted bread. [ via ]

Autumn and the Plot Against Me
An interesting personal research piece about tracking the origins of a Windows XP wallpaper photo.

Say What Again (high res)
A cleverly animated textual take on Marcellus Wallace's "Say What Again" dialogue in Pulp Fiction by Jarratt Moody. [ via ]

'Infomania' worse than marijuana
"Workers distracted by email and phone calls suffer a fall in IQ more than twice that found in marijuana smokers, new research has claimed."

Jimmy Kimmel: Takei to Hardaway
An amusing bit by George Takei who addresses shamed basketball star Tim Hardaway's recent anti-gay statements.

NZ fishermen land colossal squid
Of specific note is the enlarged picture of the caught 33 foot, 990 pound Mesonychoteuthis hamiltoni.

Better Uses for $1.52 Billion
In the wake of Microsoft's loss in their $1.52 billion dollar patent infringement suit, Mike Davidson comes up with some alternative uses for that sizeable sum.

Finding your way back home
A nice newspaper article about adults returning to their childhood homes and making them their own. It features Jeff Tabaco whose site I have read for years.

Star Trek Voice Operated Dimmer
Features sound effects and the voice of Majel Barrett-Roddenberry. [ via ]

Steampunk Keyboard Mod
An immaculately designed and built retro-style computer keyboard constructed with classic typewriter keys and custom detailing. [ via ]

Every Star Trek reference in Family Guy ever!
'Nuff said.

I find it interesting how many people I know have a birthday in the month of July. As I have aged and met more people, the number of July birthdays has continued to increase apace. As it turns out, my new circles in Tallahassee are also familiar with this phenomenon.

I wonder if the Halloween holiday, traditionally more popular with younger children, gets some women thinking about their biological clocks. Aside from a decrease in northern temperatures, which would not be applicable in the case of many I know, I can think of no other reason for October to be a preferred procreation month.

No matter the root cause, the birthdays have been all over the place. The end of last week saw three birthday events back to back. Thursday was Omar's "going out" party night during which we enjoyed Poor Paul's and the end of a band's set at Bullwinkle's. Friday was Omar's "staying in" party night hosted at his place and attended by many.

Waking up at a reasonable hour of the morning Saturday, I packed and departed Tallahassee for alternative rock's hometown, Athens, Georgia, the now one-year old home of Erik (birthday) and Lauren. The custom directions provided were excellent and made for a smooth, scenic trip. For the record, my flight plan was as follows: US 319 North → I-75 North → I-16 East → US 129 North → SR 10 West → Arrival in Athens' Boulevard neighborhood.

The three day trip was extremely enjoyable. Besides touring the University of Georgia campus, where Erik is working toward a graduate's degree, we drove through the various neighbourhoods and walked among the shops and eateries of downtown. Quality non-franchise stores and restaurants are a fixture of Athens and my few experiences were no exception.

The Grit offers vegan and vegetarian fare and a regularly changing menu filled with fresh, organic fruits and vegetables. I had a chili cheese hot dog with split pea curry soup, both of which were absolutely delicious.

The Five Star Day Café serves good 'ole home cooking, counter service style. The meatloaf dinner came with a slab of perfectly seasoned and sauced meat, suitable for two meals. Add to that generous pilings of skin-on mashed potatoes and large noodle macaroni and cheese for a meal I could not personally finish, but wished I could.

When we walked up to the door of Transmetropolitan, we were disappointed to see they were closed for their one day per year über-cleaning session. Since we had decided on this place because we wanted pizza, the Mellow Mushroom around the corner won out despite it being a chain. Needless to say, they keep up with the Athens bar of restaurant quality as evidenced by the garlic loaf, house salad, pizza and local microbrew pints. From there we wandered to Junkman's Daughter's Brother, the eclectic gift and vintage clothing store.

Like all trips and vacations, the time moves quickly and before you know it the return home begins. Wishing to maximize my time in Athens and feeling comfortable having now taken the route once, I left in the evening Monday night and carried on into the darkness. There were several long stretches of US 129 where I saw no other vehicles. Except for a few patches of rain, the ride back was nice.

Finally, no trip report would be complete without a few regional observations.

First, most of the radio stations and other organizations refer to the mid section of the state as "middle Georgia." Not "mid" or "central," but "middle." If I knew a good redneck joke, I would tell it now.

Speaking of radio stations, I never thought I would rejoice when I encountered a "top 40" station. When you are traveling through Georgia without a CD player and sub-par FM reception, you take what you can get. Needless to say, the one religious station and one country station I was forced to choose between were unacceptable and thus for a time radio silence was instituted. Luckily I was able to hang on to an oldies station—a title I have serious objections to considering they played a lot of stuff that came out after my birth—for a fair bit of time.

Athens itself was another story completely. The one station I listened to was WPPP Hot 100.7 FM, which features rock but airs all matter genre of songs and artists, absolutely commercial free. It gave me much aural pleasure.

In all it has been a pretty good month for me, which is good with my name and all.

Disable Offline Files Synchronization Warnings
Many custom settings cause errors during synchronization. Edit the registry to remove all but critical reporting and synch uninterrupted.

Mr. TTT Burger
"Introducing THE BURGER BUNCH, part of seven new plush dolls guaranteed to bring magic and mystery into the world."

In pictures: G8 summit body language
I meant to post this sooner, but it is still interesting.

Bob Sokol and Amyl on Stupid Pet Tricks
The 1983 story of a man, his dog and David Letterman.

Does anyone speak German?
I would be very appreciative for a German to English human translation of this article. Or at least a summary of what information was discovered about the therein-referenced IP addresses.

Unbelievably Cool
I may not care for the Bush White House nor watch American Idol, but I am very jealous of this. Some day…

While trying to fix a problem that had been preventing me from using the Offline Files feature of Windows, I saw repeated references to a command-line tool released by Microsoft designed specifically to work with Offline Files.

The first few sites that referenced the tool—called CSC Utility (csccmd.exe)—all pointed to a relevant Microsoft Knowledge Base article. Once there, I quickly realised why I saw so many people across the internet looking for the executable.

Microsoft developed and released the last version (1.0) of the CSC Utility as part of the Windows Server 2003 Resource Kit Tools. That kit is easily available to download, but from what I read about my specific issues, only the follow-up version (1.1) would suffice.

For an unknown reason, Version 1.1 is only officially available from Microsoft Product Support, and getting it apparently involves contacting Microsoft and either demonstrating the file is necessary to solve a documented problem or paying for the "support call." Even then, it seems that often people's telephone messages go unanswered.

In any event, there was only one way that I wanted to solve this problem and the CSC tool was it. I started searching around specifically for a site offering the download. When I finally found one at megaupload.com, I discovered it was a porno pop-up, ad-laden hell hole.

Fortunately the download that resulted was a legitimate, virus-free copy of the CSC Utility Version 1.1. Obtaining a utility designed to tweak a major component of Windows should not be this difficult. I have no idea why they refuse to make it available for public download and instead link to the 1.0 version—beneath a disclaimer about how several features are only available with 1.1.

Of course within minutes of finally using the tool, my offline files were in order and working perfectly. It is completely aggravating to spend more time than necessary fixing something stupid in Windows. Save yourself the grief and aggravation and download CSCCMD 1.1. Convenient, no? Please do not link directly to the file, but instead send your friends here.

I figure while I am at it, why not pass along some other facts you may enjoy.

• In the event your server-side share changes—which can include it being relocated, renamed or removed—and the Synchronization Manager fails to work because it complains about the modified share, use the csccmd /moveshare command to rename the share in the CSC cache.
• If you use a redirected My Documents folder as I do, enabling Offline Files forces it and other system folders to automatically cache locally. You will see the ticked "Make Available Offline" option dimmed for My Documents, My Pictures and the other administratively assigned offline files. This is particularly annoying in my environment, where every document does not need to be accessible all the time.

  This one has a simple ending, though. Use the Group Policy Editor (gpedit.msc) to enable a setting called "Do not automatically make redirected folders available offline." It is located here: User Configuration > Administrative Templates > Network > Offline Files. The same panel under Computer Configuration contains even more settings, including the administratively assigned offline files option.

• Unlike some of the other folders Windows considers "special," the Offline Files cache (%WINDIR%\CSC) cannot be moved or redirected automatically. The official solution is to use the cachemov.exe utility from the Windows 2000 Resource Kit, but I crafted an alternative workaround.

  The freeware Windows junction creator and reparse point viewer—aptly named Junction—by Mark Russinovich is the perfect way to relocate your CSC cache to another local disk or partition. Use Junction to create a symbolic link in %WINDIR%\CSC pointing to your preferred folder. All requests for that original directory will be seamlessly redirected to the true location, transparent to the user and system. This sort of symbolic linking is popular among Linux/Apache web hosts who generally set www to redirect to public_html.

• If things are really loused up, consider simply reinitializing the cache. This option will delete all offline files, reset the Offline Files database and clear the "Make Available Offline" settings. You can do this from the Offline Files tab in the Folder Options control panel applet. Press Control+Shift while clicking "Delete Files," then confirm your selection to begin the reinitialization. For Windows 7 and Vista, follow the steps in KB942974.
• It is easy to bookmark the specific key within the Registry Editor, so if you intend to modify administratively assigned offline files often, I suggest doing it here: HKEY_CURRENT_USER > Software > Microsoft > Windows > CurrentVersion > NetCache > AssignedOfflineFolders.
• Speaking of Registry Editor favourites, take them with you, share them with others and never lose them again by exporting this branch: HKEY_CURRENT_USER > Software > Microsoft > Windows > CurrentVersion > Applets > Regedit > Favorites.
• Sometimes when you use TweakUI, Windows will start displaying icons in sixteen color mode. If this happens, edit the Shell Icon BPP string to 16 and reboot. That key is here: HKEY_CURRENT_USER > Control Panel > Desktop > WindowMetrics.
• If you would like to force Windows to use a UNC network location in lieu of installation media, change the Installation Sources and Source Path keys to the UNC where the Cabinet Files live. Those keys are here: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE > SOFTWARE > Microsoft > Windows > CurrentVersion > Setup.
• The recently released Security Update for Windows XP (KB917537) may give you a hard time if you wisely do not have Internet Information Services installed. If you find this update installing repeatedly and appearing as a new update, create a zero byte file called asp.dll and save it in the inetsrv folder within %WINDIR%\System32. The next time you run Microsoft Update, the patch should stick. In the event it fails again, reboot your computer then scan for updates. A sign of success is the asp.dll file you created having grown in size to 361 KB from zero.

"Traces of two earlier buildings on a wall in old Montreal"
Like counting the rings in the trunk of an old tree, the photo of this Canadian building allows us an unusual yet compelling glimpse into the past.

Ernest and Bertram
Watch the eight minute short film that was pulled from release after a cease and desist from the Sesame Workshop legal team. [ via ]

Giant Bat-Eating Centipede
Holy shit! [ via ]

Save Flash Video (FLV)
Supports sites like YouTube and Google Video.

Free Player for Flash Video
FLV Player 1.3.3 is a standalone client for playing FLV videos.

.htaccess Cheat Sheet

Vote Side of Hashbrowns for America
"Featuring multi-media public service advertisements (PSAs) and a new Web site, www.PayAttention.org, the Vote campaign is designed to educate young adults about the ease and importance of voting in the 2006 midterm elections. This target audience, 18 to 24 years old, is the largest group of non-voters in America, according to the U.S. Census Bureau."

Despite my recent push to find new destinations to check out regularly, it seems the world of the web has entered one of its stagnet points as it has been known to do from time to time. Not that I am complaining really, because I have not done too much myself to add content to the fray.

Unlike at the White House, a slow news day here does not mean that news agencies have to go out of their way to make mountains from molehills. Instead, may you be entertained by the following.

Wendy's Free Frosty Weekend
"From Friday, May 13, through Sunday, May 15, consumers can pick up a free Junior Frosty at their local Wendy's restaurant. No purchase is required for customers to receive the free dessert. The company estimates it will give away more than 14 million Junior Frostys during the special three-day event."

Owner of Wendy's chili finger found
"A finger allegedly found in a bowl of chili at a Wendy's restaurant has been identified, US police have said. It belonged to a family friend of Anna Ayala, the woman who said she discovered the finger as she ate in a restaurant in San Jose, California."

Henderson Legs Raise Eyebrows
"People in Henderson are talking about the massive sculpture of a woman's legs, spread open on Welcome Avenue. At first glance, it looks more like something you'd find at a strip club, instead of a quiet neighborhood." [ via ]

Zippo-looking camera on TSA no-fly list
The Department of Homeland Security at work for you. [ via ]

UN looks to Brooklyn for temporary home
"The possibility emerged on Tuesday in a new progress report from Mr. Annan on plans to move the organization into temporary housing during the renovation of the United Nations headquarters on the East River in Manhattan, once stylish but now dangerously antiquated." [ via ]

NYC Uptown Wall Collapse
New information and great photographs on yesterday's accident.

Judge: Nebraska Ban on Same-Sex Marriage Unconstitutional

Birding in Anza-Borrego Desert State Park, California
"This is the largest state park outside of Alaska with over 600,000 acres ranging from flat desert sinks to high, boulder-strewn mountains."

"Cock" banned from West Hollywood Signs
Every sign that contains the word cocktail is now illegal. Your government at work.

Pope Creature Comforts
The new Pope is moving in and the BBC takes a look at his loot.

NASA Shuttle to retire in 2010
The year we make contact. heh heh

Two NASA Astronauts on Star Trek: Enterprise finale tonight
"While on vacation, the real-life space explorers traded in their spacesuits for make-believe future space garb as the two made a guest appearance on the upcoming season finale of the science fiction television series Star Trek: Enterprise."

Star Trek franchise ends 18 year run
"After 18 years and 624 hours of Star Trek, the audience began to have a little bit of overkill."

BBC Opens Newsroom to RSS
"The BBC has opened up its content more so that people can use news stories and headlines on their own sites via RSS."

Mobile GUI: Design Standards Needed
"But the mobile phone industry is in danger of confusing people in its quest to pack everything into handsets, thinks Scott Jenson, a leading mobile industry design consultant."